This is a collection of the most important and interesting recent articles on the impact of religious change in England in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. An introduction and sectional commentaries help to guide the reader through the maze of current scholarly debates.

The English Reformation remains deeply controversial. While there is a growing perception that the English experienced a "long Reformation, that it was a protracted process rather than an "event", very significant historiographical differences remain over the pace of change, the means ofimplementation, and the degree of enthusiasm with which the English people experienced the dismantling of their medieval Catholic culture. How widespread was the appeal of early Protestantism in England, and what, if anything, did it owe to native roots? How effectively was religious change enactedin the localities, and how did local communities react to the swings of official policy? In what sense was England a "Protestant nation" by the early seventeenth century? How much continuity remained with the Catholic past?The contributions in this book identify and, in different and sometimes contradictory ways, attempt to resolve these and other questions. It is structured in three sections that combine a themat

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These essays examine the long-term impact of the Protestant reformation in England. This text should be of interest to historians of early modern England and reformation studies.

Recasts the Reformation as a battleground over memory, in which new identities were formed through acts of commemoration, invention and repression.

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book is a study of the English Reformation as a political and literary event. Focusing on an eclectic group of texts, unified by their explication of the key elements of the cultural history of the period 1510-1580 the book unravels the political, poetic and religious themes of the era. Through readings of work by Edmund Spenser, William Tyndale, Sir Thomas More and John Skelton, as well as less celebrated Tudor writers, Betteridge surveys pre-Henrician literature as well as Henrician Reformation texts, and delineates the literature of the reigns of Edward VI, Mary Tudor and Elizabeth I. Ultimately, the book argues that this literature, and the era, should not be understood simply on the basis of conflicts between Protestantism and Catholicism but rather that Tudor culture must be seen as fractured between emerging confessional identities and marked by a conflict between those who embraced confessionalism and those who rejected it. This important study will be fascinating reading for students and researchers in early modern English literature and history.

"This book sheds new light on the unfolding of Reformation in England by examining the ideological development of Catholicism in the formative years between the break with Rome and the consolidation of Elizabethan Protestantism. It argues that the undoubted strength of Catholicism in these years may have come less from its traditionalism, and its resistance to change, than from its ability to embrace reforming principles. The humanist elements within Henry VIII's religious policies encouraged the development of the Erasmian potential already well established in English Catholic thought. A dominant strain of Catholic ideology emerged which attempted not only to defend, but also to reform the Catholic faith, and to promote the study of Scripture, the use of the vernacular, and the refashioning of doctrine. This provided the basis for attempts to launch a Catholic Reformation under Mary I, and remained influential during the early years of Elizabeth, until reconfigured by the experience of exile and the drive for Counter-Reformation uniformity." "Dr. Wooding shows that Catholicism in this period was neither a defunct tradition, nor one merely reacting to Protestantism, but a vigorous intellectual movement responding to the reformist impulse of the age. Its development illustrates the English Reformation in microcosm: scholarly, humanist, practical, and preserving its own peculiarities distinct from European trends. It shows that reform was not a Protestant reserve, but a broad concern in which many participated. Rethinking Catholicism in Reformation England makes an important contribution to the intellectual history of the Reformation."--BOOK JACKET.

Twenty years ago, historians thought they understood the Reformation in England. Professor A. G. Dickens's elegant The English Reformation was then new, and highly influential: it seemed to show how national policy and developing reformist allegiance interacted to produce an acceptable and successful Protestant Reformation. But, since then, the evidence of the statute book, of Protestant propagandists and of heresy trials has come to seem less convincing, Neglected documents, especially the records of diocesan administration and parish life, have been explored, new questions have been asked - and many of the answers have been surprising. Some of the old certainties have been demolished, and many of the assumptions of the old interpretation of the Reformation have been undermined, in a wide-ranging process of revision. But the fruits of the new 'revisionism' are still buried in technical academic journals, difficult for students and teachers to find and to use. There is no up-to-date textbook, no comprehensive new survey, to challenge the orthodoxies enshrined in older works. This volume seeks to fulfill two crucial needs for students of Tudor England. First, it brings together some of the most readable of the recent innovative essays and articles into a single book. Second, it seeks to show how a new 'revisionist' interpretation of the English Reformation can be constructed, and examines its strengths and weaknesses. In short, it is an alternative to a new textbook survey - until someone has time (and courage) to write one. The new Introduction sets out the framework for a new understanding of the Reformation, and shows how already published work can be fitted into it. The nine essays (one printed here for the first time) provide detailed studies of particular problems in Reformation history, and general surveys of the progress of religious change. The new Conclusion tries to plug some of the remaining gaps, and suggests how the Reformation came to divide the English nation. It is a deliberately controversial collection, to be used alongside existing textbooks and to promote rethinking and debate.

In the fifty years between 1530 and 1580, England moved from being one of the most lavishly Catholic countries in Europe to being a Protestant nation, a land of whitewashed churches and antipapal preaching. What was the impact of this religious change in the countryside? And how did country people feel about the revolutionary upheavals that transformed their mental and material worlds under Henry VIII and his three children? In this book a reformation historian takes us inside the mind and heart of Morebath, a remote and tiny sheep farming village on the southern edge of Exmoor. The bulk of Morebath’s conventional archives have long since vanished. But from 1520 to 1574, through nearly all the drama of the English Reformation, Morebath’s only priest, Sir Christopher Trychay, kept the parish accounts on behalf of the churchwardens. Opinionated, eccentric, and talkative, Sir Christopher filled these vivid scripts for parish meetings with the names and doings of his parishioners. Through his eyes we catch a rare glimpse of the life and pre-Reformation piety of a sixteenth-century English village. The book also offers a unique window into a rural world in crisis as the Reformation progressed. Sir Christopher Trychay’s accounts provide direct evidence of the motives which drove the hitherto law-abiding West-Country communities to participate in the doomed Prayer-Book Rebellion of 1549 culminating in the siege of Exeter that ended in bloody defeat and a wave of executions. Its church bells confiscated and silenced, Morebath shared in the punishment imposed on all the towns and villages of Devon and Cornwall. Sir Christopher documents the changes in the community, reluctantly Protestant and increasingly preoccupied with the secular demands of the Elizabethan state, the equipping of armies, and the payment of taxes. Morebath’s priest, garrulous to the end of his days, describes a rural world irrevocably altered and enables us to hear the voices of his villagers after four hundred years of silence.